Details

I found this photo I snapped on our last day in Basel last May. I think it was a big motivator for finding a dressmaking class. Although I like fairly plain clothing, there is something special about a hidden detail - the collar band or under collar, a pocket or coat lining - that can make a garment feel really special. None of the pieces I've made so far has been anything but straightforward, but I can see a day when I indulge myself.

We (re) watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them last night. If J.K. Rowling's imagination, Eddie Redmayne's perfect awkwardness or the spectacular creatures weren't enough, consider that the film is set in 1926 in New York and the clothes are to die for. I fell in love with the leather collar band on Newt Scamander's coat in practically the first scene and was captivated by the costumes ever after. I'm not the only one taken with that coat. 

There are entire Pinterest groups based on just figuring out how to make this coat. I'm not telling Bill I found a place where you can buy them in 'adult' men's sizes...

Knole and Numbers

One of the books I read while we were in France was Inheritance, by Robert Sackville-West. It could easily have been called Disinherited, as many of his stories included those less fortunate than himself. He doesn't own Knole, but he is entitled to live there, which is probably a much better deal in these modern times.



I ran across his description of the great stairwell that made reference to Maarten de Vos (or Maerton deVos) and scribbled it down, so pleased to have found it.

I have already mentioned that Knole is thought to be, or at least to have been, a Calendar House; they are apparently fairly rare. 

One of the other things I remembered was reading (or was it hearing?) some guide leaflet/recording about all the decorations of the Grand Staircase. One of the main things was a nude statue underneath the stairs of a ballerina who had been a long term lover of one of the Sackville-Wests. Her story is well-covered in the book, but I think the statue was buried in the basement for quite a while after the wife came along.

The decoration of the actual stairwell includes carvings and paintings concerning the four seasons (easy enough); the five senses are easy, too, even if I had to think about it and count on my fingers. (If you don't have a 'gratitude list' for your 'down' days, I recommend you write one and put each of those senses on it.)

I Googled the heck out of Maarten de Vos and didn't find much, but it does look as though this 16th Century Flemish painter had a large influence on subsequent artists. According to deVos there are Four Stages in the life of Man: Amor (Love), Labor (Work), Honor (Achievement?) and Dolor (Pain). Gosh, I'm really looking forward to getting old after winkling out the definition of 'Dolor'. He did paintings of each of these, but the ones at Knole are by a later painter.

Also according to the stairwell (and a few other sources) there are Seven Virtues. I had the impression at the time these were carvings on the banister or newel posts, but I never figured it out, there is so much going on in a relatively small space. 

In looking all these things up, I ran into some odd words. 

According to painter Brueghel (Pieter the Elder), the Seven Deadly Sins are:

Pride, Avarice, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath and Acedia

The last word apparently means apathy or sloth.

When looking for the 7 Virtues, I found reference to 

Wisdom, Justice, Charity, Faith, Hope, Fortitude and Temperance

but also to 'Liberality' and Sapientia (which translates as Prudence)

Wikipedia / The Bible has : Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, Humility

I would guess 'Liberality' goes in line with 'Kindness', perhaps Fortitude with Patience and/or Diligence. However, I note that the arts don't give much attention to 'Chastity', or 'Humility' for that matter. 

The visitors' information provided at Knole pointed out that the artwork on the Great Stairs did not include the virtue of 'Temperance', a funny little thing which is probably why I remembered all this to begin with.

The Last Day We 'Cheated'

Our last day in Basel had its ups and downs. We saw Jane and Chris off on a train to Zurich where they would catch their flight home to Sydney.  By the way, have you ever heard of the Gnomes of Zurich? I never had, but apparently it is a common catch-phrase that came up when we were discussing the whole Basilisk thing and Harry Potter associations.  Bill and Jane seemed quite familar with this phrase I'd never heard and they also related it to the Gremlins of Gringott's.  

It seems this is a British phrase arising after WWII when British politicians worried about speculation against the value of the pound. If you understand 'speculation etc' you're ahead of me. Anyhow, we waved good-bye to Jane and Chris, which was a bit of a bummer. 



Then we had quite a bit of time to kill before heading to the airport in Basel ourselves. The weather was not very nice. In fact about lunch time it began to pour and although we'd left our luggage in a locker at the train station, I hadn't been able to bring myself to leave my laptop in there. It didn't quite fit into my backpack entirely and I wasn't keen on letting it get wet, so I said I would buy lunch. 




We started out a little picky about where to go, but as the rain increased I just ducked into a brasserie near the Marktplatz. It turned out to be a decent choice, particularly as I had some Swiss Francs to get rid of. They took care of that.



It was hard to choose, but I ended up getting 'white asparagus soup' and 'meatloaf with veg'. Bill had some kind of exotic salad followed by sausages and wonderful looking hashed brown potatoes (only the Swiss call it something different). The soup was absolute heaven, though I'm not sure white asparagus tastes any different to green. I'm sure it was the huge amount of cream in it that made it so good. I was well full after putting most of that away and the meatloaf and (tinned?) veg were a let down after that. Bill's sausage was a far better choice but I wouldn't trade even that for my soup.  



I ate as slowly as I could, not wanting to go back out into the rain. When neither of us could swallow another bite we had to give in and leave. We still had most of the afternoon to fill. Bill led me to the Tinguely museum. Entry was 10CHF and to be warm and dry I thought it was worth it. But it turned out to be an astonishing place, even having seen the fountain.

In the main room there was a contraption, sorry, art piece, about 10-12 feet high with multiple stair cases, mostly metal, some leading upwards to a platform where one could go down some of the other stairs, but not all led anywhere at all. Underneath the frame was a collection of odds an ends that filled the space. 

Three months later (before finding photos to insert) I still remember a red velvet curtain, a doll that was past her best, a tacky gold framed painting of Venice inside a rusty guillotine and a large plastic garden gnome hanging upside down with his pointy head in a blue bucket (with lots of small coins thrown in, presumably by museum visitors for good luck). We walked around the thing several times, open mouthed, then climbed what stairs we could. 




There was a cord attached to a large bubble on the floor that looked like some sort of switch. Bill mimed that he was going to step on it, but there was a child half way up one of the ladders and I stopped him. Someone else stomped on that bubble a few minutes later. 

The red curtain opened and closed in front of the fancy doll. The guillotine opened and closed, obscuring and revealing the painting of Venice.

The upside down gnome spun around. He seemed strangely suited to do that with his pointy head as though trying to screw himself into the ground.

A person couldn't at least smile seeing all the useless activity going on with these pieces of junk.

For a long time, I thought this was the whole museum and did feel a tiny bit ripped off. We took our time perusing the gift shop section and there were some rather clever little gismos, but nothing we couldn't live without. Then one of the attendants said something that alerted Bill to the existence of another floor. 



That was a long string of large rooms each with 8-10 other 'art installations', films and newspaper clippings about Jean Tinguely. Most of the pieces had the bubble on the floor and there were about a dozen children (and more adults) who delighted in stepping on these switches. The thing was, it didn't always make the machines come to life like those street artists who stand immobile until someone puts a coin in their cup. There was an element of uncertainty, or perhaps of intermittent reward (like gambling). Everyone would hope to be present when the switch did work. 







Some machines drew scribbles with a pen on paper, others spun around, one shook a variety of appendages including an elderly and ragged pink velvet shoe. There were several like clock hands that moved continuously, but so slowly that one didn't immediately notice, and the 'hands' weren't affixed together nor did they move necessarily clockwise. There was one that seemed to have some sort of old rabbit fur or foxes tail affixed and when it moved it reminded me of one of my dogs riding a visitor's leg.  Except I could laugh about this instead of be horrified.

I watched part of the film about Tinguely and gathered that he and this woman (Niki de Saint Phalle), whom they didn't mention was his wife (or perhaps they did, but not in English) trawled garbage dumps and salvage yards in America and Europe looking for materials. One of the newspaper articles mentioned that he was a 'nihilist', which I don't quite understand except that it was sort of popular for a while. Several mentioned an exhibit in New York City that destroyed itself, which apparently rather kick-started the successful portion of his career. 

We both agreed it was totally worthwhile having gone to the museum, both from the incredible things we saw and from having the afternoon well filled in. I also promised myself that I would learn to do videos on my camera soon.

In the meantime, I found a couple on Youtube: Here  and Here.

We picked up our luggage and caught the bus out to the airport. Things were downhill after that, sitting for hours waiting for a delayed flight, arriving home to find our luggage had gone elsewhere.  I realised my glasses were packed (but I had 20-year-old ones that would do for a while), also my only house shoes and the charging cable of my lap top were unavailable for a couple of days.  Another couple with two very small children also endured that wait. Worse, theirs had started very early that morning. I was dismayed not to have my charging cable but things could have been worse. From the other woman's expression and her giggle, I would have bet money she'd packed her birth control pills in her checked / lost luggage...

Swimming in the Rhine

Well, I must confess that I am bored with Switerland, hence my absence here. Also, after being away in France for a month there has been much to do around the house, laundry, garden and social-life-wise.

There are still a couple of things to share about Basel that I wouldn't want to leave off. There are still a million photos I could show you, but it's tedious. Instead, I will give you this link. You can use Google maps to walk each of those routes and the leaflet will tell you about the men they were named for and the sights you are seeing.

One day we, the four of us, had completed yet another walk that somehow ended back at the riverside and we had a drink at a sidewalk cafe. A tidy young man, short of stature but with all sorts of bulging muscles approached us. He politely asked if we were going to be there for a while, maybe 10-15 minutes? He explained that he wished to go for a swim in the river, but needed someone to look after his things. We were about to leave, but said we could stay since we had no pressing reasons not to and he was so courteous and speaking very good English. 

Then it got a bit strange. He thanked us and then apologised that he needed to change into his swimming costume, which would require him to strip off. He said he would be quick and mentioned that it was actually legal for people to be naked within 500 meters of the Rhine. I've been unable to confirm that statement but apparently nudity in Basel generally isn't illegal. I'd check that before ripping off your clothes, mind. 





We were generally speechless by then and he was quick about it. He did his quick change behind me, so I missed it all. I was of course moderately curious but felt it was beneath my dignity to turn around and gawp. Chris burst out laughing and the young man was so quick about it he was well down the road by the time I had my camera out. I thought Jane's face said it all.

I went closer to the riverside to see where the young man was going to launch himself. We'd previously seen a couple of teenage boys drifting down the river on some sort of floats. The tide was, as I mentioned about the boats on strings, quite swift, and the idea of going for a swim seemed a bit mental. Well, perhaps in keeping with his behaviour so far. We were all worried about how we would get out once in. 

We needn't have worried. He might have done maybe 400 meters in the water (drifting more than swimming, I would say) before attaching himself to one of the boat piers and hauling himself out. The boat driver seemed acquainted with this practice and perhaps with the young man specifically. 




We were all laughing a lot. In part because of the spectacle we'd just witnessed - well most of us - but also because for some reason Chris had decided to get back down on hands and knees to test the temperature of the water. This wasn't unusual for Chris except that he'd been having trouble with his back, I forget what he did to injure it, and none of us - including Chris - were at all sure he would be able to stand back up. I couldn't decide which of these characters was more ridiculous.

Jantz and Chris both survived just fine. And we all agreed that it had been a very interesting day.

Museums We Didn't Visit and a Fountain We Did

I generally learn a lot from Jane and Chris when we travel together. Sometimes this is about what might be good value for money, but mostly I learn more about how not to spend it. For example, they won't pay admission fees to any museums. I'm fine with this most of the time, but now and then I think there are things worth paying a nominal fee to see, especially if they let me take photos and feel as though I brought something beautiful home with me.

Basel fine arts museum

We didn't visit the fine arts museum, though we walked past it any number of times. 

We poked our noses through the doorway, but stopped and
turned at the payment window.

Across the road was a very strange looking building with almost no windows.




Bill told me it was the new annex built to house priceless art works that could be displayed without danger of exposure to sunlight. I haven't looked it up to confirm this, but it is the only sensible explanation for the weird lack of windows, except perhaps a prison.

We passed by the Paper Mill museum and I would probably have liked to have visited it, but it was shut for lunch when we were there anyhow, so never mind about that. 

I snapped a couple of photos through the window. 




The phrase 'paper MILL' trips off the tongue with familiarity and I do generally know how paper is made. 




In spite of realising paper manufacture involves using a lot of water, I somehow never associated a water wheel with it. Duh. 





(According to Trip Advisor ratings, it would have been good).

We didn't go in this rather scary looking place called the Spielzeug Welten Museum. 




From the window display I thought it must be something about war, given the violent looking characters on display in the window. 




Then again, there was a sweet little carved sign outside. 





My party was advancing without me so there wasn't time to discuss. Turns out it was a toy museum.


One day on our wanders Chris and Jane took us to see something they'd discovered outside the Tinguely museum. Of course we didn't go inside it, but the water fountain outside was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. My photos really don't do it justice, so I found you a video. I'm not sure the link works properly. If not, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk5ck-8YTvg 



It was a great place to sit and have lunch! Almost as good as the fountain was watching the reaction of other visitors. 

My favourite.

The Tinguely museum.

 More about Tinguely later...

We didn't go into the museum of Roman artefacts either, but Chris had a look at part of the archaeological dig on display. Hilarious on several levels, but impressive; I hope I can get all the way down and all the way back up when I'm 71 1/2.

Synchronised Knitting

So, if I haven't been writing here, what have I been doing besides genealogy? Well, I've made a few things, mostly from yarn ('Wool' is a generic term here meaning all types of yarn, but when I say 'wool', I mean sheep's fur, not acrylic stuff. That said, I mostly use acrylic because it is cheaper and what is mostly on offer for free).

As part of the WI Craft group, I made some 'twiddle muffs' for the dementia charity we were supporting this year. These were made back in September but they only got presented to the charity at the April meeting, where I learned that they had come up with a 'nicer' name for them (?) and they didn't want buttons on any more. Great.  I have to say they are the most boring things in the world to make, but never mind, I did my part.

Front

They are basically a large rectangle, sewn together to make a lined tube. Then you sew things on it that people with dementia can 'twiddle'. Apparently it comforts them. These will likely go to some ladies as men, we were told, prefer brighter, primary colours. So even if one has dementia some of those ingrained ideas stick. 

Back

I was given the yarn to make these with, so all it 'cost' me was a selection of buttons I wasn't likely to ever use. I chose large ones to make it easier to sew them on firmly (and easier to cut off, I guess). Also ones with some sort of interesting shape or texture. 

Inside

I dread to think these will all go in the bin, but I guess that is a likely outcome. I do hate waste {sigh}.

I made these while sitting in front of the telly after dinner, something that has come to be an established habit for good or ill. After a busy day pushing myself to do challenging things I find it very relaxing to veg out but to keep my hands busy.  I'm much less likely to snack if I'm knitting (my generic term for both knitting & crochet) and I can make a glass of wine last almost forever. 

If you want an even bigger challenge, can I recommend a foreign programme/film with subtitles? We've been watching two Italian detective shows: Inspector Montalbano and Young Montalbano. There are a lot more episodes for the former but I must admit the younger Montalbano is my preference as he's very pretty, but also because it seems a bit more light-hearted. It is a more recent creation though it is a prequel to the original Inspector Montalbano, so there may be more coming along. 

At first I couldn't knit and watch at the same time, but I've got the rhythm down now. Saying Italian takes a lot longer than reading English, so I just need to get a feel for how often the subtitles change and sort of get myself synchronised. Probably best left to slightly more advanced knitters.

Home Fires Theme Song

Home Fires is a dramatic series (OK, soap) set in a Cheshire village during WWII. The main characters are members of the Women's Institute, which is why I started watching it. Now in the second series I'm not sure it has much to do with the WI any longer but, too late, I'm hooked.

No idea if it is available in the US yet but if it comes to your area I recommend watching it, at least once. In the meantime, enjoy the theme song.

source

It's written by Samuel Sim. The artists are vocalists Heather Cairncross, Ioanna Forbes L'Estrange, Rachel Weston and Grace Davidson. Chris Richards (clarinet), Ileana Ruhemann (flute) and Caroline Dale (cello).

This music has grabbed me almost as much as the TV show.

The Tightwad's Choice

The last gift I'll tell you about (maybe) is one from Lucy. I wish I'd photographed the package before unwrapping it. We could tell it was a basket with items poking out of the top, but I was astounded at how simple the presentation. The whole thing was wrapped in what I would guess to be organza - perhaps starched organza? with the two long ends twisted and twisted until they formed what looked like a flower. I've seen 1980s belts twisted this way...

Anyhow, the items were astonishing until I read the book titles: a bottle each of olive oil, CocaCola ('full fat', so not something I'd ever drink) and vinegar; also a couple of tea lights, some dental floss and a small bag of kitty litter. Bill turned to me and asked why on earth anyone would give us kitty litter!

I found multiple uses for each of these in one of the books included:

The other book, a wonderful reference from Readers Digest, Extraordinary Uses for Ordinary Things, pulled me quite a long way into it before I realised I had about six books on the go at once and needed to finish one or two if I weren't to live with the whole stack beside me on the love seat. (Though now that I've typed it, I can't think of a better use for my love seat...)

I'm sure, as with Vivien's gift, pulling this together gave Lucy a lot of laughs and I'm really appreciative of her thoughtfulness. As I mentioned to her in my note, I now worry that (a) I'll never again throw anything away without first checking this reference and (b) we'll start buying odd things like cat litter and denture cleaning for their myriad uses in spite of having no cat but still (most of) our teeth...

Did you get anything 'special' for Christmas?

An EGGceptional Gift!

Bill and I saved opening our presents to one another and from friends for Boxing Day. He bought me mostly books of course and some of my gifts for him were more appreciated than others. However we bought got an eggnormous kick out of our present from Vivien and Steve. 

They had the eggstraordinary idea of giving us a half dozen items relating to cooking eggs. I didn't know most of these things eggisted and will have to have Bill help me eggsperiment in using these eggsotic implements. I believe that most may be eggsamples of how Brits eat their boiled eggs for breakfast. I just tend to fry, poach or scramble my eggs, so I shall have to eggsamine the eggciting recipes that are in the book included. I can't wait to eggspand my repertoire for cooking this eggcellent and ineggspensive source of protein. You might guess some of the terms I used in my thank you note; my only eggscuse is that Vivien 'started it'.

Imagine my eggnominy at having given them my usual selection of boring food and drink; I shall definitely have to eggsplore more interesting eggsamples of presents next year!

Happy Birthday to My Lovely Husband, Bill!

Spring Cleaning

As I mentioned the other day, I've been bitten by a spring cleaning bug.  Bill is a bit perplexed and I'll admit that if the usual happens by the time you read this I will have recovered entirely. In the meantime I've been exploring some ideas new to me.

A while back I bought a book by Cheryl Mendelson called Home Comforts - the Art and Science of Keeping House Book. She is yet another former-lawyer turned writer; makes me glad I never considered law school seeing all that wasted tuition.  I bought her book because a segment I could access on Amazon waxed blissfully about the serenity of having a housekeeping routine. I was obviously brain-washed by those two or three pages; the rest is a dead boring book about all the minutiae of household work. I use it as a doorstop reference on occasion. 

I did read enough to learn that she recommends cleaning a room from top (highest up) to bottom and from the inside out. I found that last bit intriguing. I was telling Vivien the other day that my Mom's method of housecleaning was to prepare for the annual gatherings of family at Thanksgiving and Christmas but otherwise to generally ignore anything that wasn't too un-hygienic.  She would just throw everything that was out of place into the spare bedroom; I grew up believing most people had a 'junk room' for this very purpose. Except my Grandma and Grandpa who were perfect in this respect.  Mom's mom, my Grandmother, took a different tack.  

Vivien was moved to look up the plural; turns out both crocuses and croci are correct.

Grandmother kept everything looking ship-shape, but I learned early on that one never knew what one might find in her cupboards or drawers; opening closets could be life-threatening on occasion. 

I've aimed in my adult life to wean myself off of the junk room (I'm not counting the attic, yet) and to aim more for Grandmother's approach than Mom's, except that I like to know where to find things.  When my sewing room gets really out of control, usually sometime around Christmas, I find places to put everything that has piled up on the floor, then I work on clearing the surfaces until it looks more like a normal person's house. Drawers and cupboard's don't get much attention except to figure out how to get more in them. Mendelson's inside out approach is completely opposite to mine.

I decided that top-to-bottom and inside-out should be also include East to West, North to South, upstairs then downstairs (not counting the attic...or the garage - way too cold to tackle those yet). The upstairs most North-easterly room is the bathroom. Whittling down the soap collection, finishing off the spare bottle of bleach and starting on the last tube of toothpaste opened up some possibilities for improved arrangements. Bill still has his own cupboard and there is still a cleaning supplies cupboard (now with terry cloth and linen rags), but now the medicines are in their own space and I have my own cupboard.

The shower drain was running slower and slower.  I finally give up on vinegar, baking soda and hot water and moved on to serious chemicals. I've came to realise how much Bill has always taken care of when I had to ask how to remove the bayonet-style light bulb (British light bulbs don't always screw in like American ones) in order to clean the light fixture. I took the curtains down to wash them and re-discovered the mechanics of the curtain rod and why things sometimes got stuck. I consulted Mendelson on the nature and source of dust and wished I hadn't (though I do think she under-rates the contribution of outside dirt tracked in by shoes).  

The main thing that occurred to me during all this busyness was that dusting, washing curtains and re-organising bathroom storage gives one the feeling of being in control. I am of the view that most 'control' in life is illusory, but still I could finally see why devoted housekeepers might love their work.  I suspect mine is going to a short romance, but I shall enjoy it while the bloom is ... whatever that quote is.

Do you have a spring cleaning routine?