Last weekend we visited the "Peter und Paul" festival' at Bretten, which is a small town somewhere eastward of Karlsruhe.
It’s some kind of annual renaissance fair including the reenactment of a battle which happend 1504 and was about the citizens of Bretten defending their home so as not to becomme a "Swabian" town but staying a "Baden" town. By now the whole area is a integral part of Baden-Wuertemberg but every year they remember that in truth they are people of "Baden" only.

Apart from that it was really nice there.
There was some arabic tea, great friends, splendid jugglers, good artisans, music, food, flag throwers and a marching band. Some marching bands in fact.

Flag throwers an a marching band.

I know it sounds a bit boring, but yet ...
.. you had to be there.

I’m talking about the italian group called Contrada della Corte. (I know some of you speak italian) They’re really awsome.

You may think there is an end to what you can do with one flag, and also there has to be a limited number to how many flags one person can handle, but, BUT like in juggling there’s a lot more posible than you can imagine.

They are just guys, but sometimes they look like butterflys and most of the time I just stood there wondering about what exactly they were doing.
And they acted with this sort of pomp and ado as only the italians can do...

Whatch this:



Well, here you can see only three flags, last weekend I saw some guy juggle with up to seven flags!

They don’t just do this juggling thing, they also have a bunch of choreographies which include a lot of throwing and waving.

Watch:



They also have a fire show, but we didn’t stay long enough to see it (this time).


You Had To Be There!

Here are some new, old summer pictures for you:

I’m happy to declare my decision on the naming of the bathroom project.

I’m calling it The Gladden Fields Project

Hands up everyone who saw it comming!

I had a lot of reservation to choose that particular name, and I’m affraid that I there will be an increase of juwelry sock losing, but I just had to!

Also I want to share a picture with you
It’s about a crane becomming ... well a crane.



I’m really hoping this transparent spacing stuff will help. I would hate to do this bird more often than necessary.

... I actually considered taking out the window, placing it over the painted sketch and do the thing as one piece.

I’m glad I didn’t. I created about seven or eight "Puzzleteile" (and the leaves) and combined them on the window.

Retrospectively I’m glad I didn’t do the whole-window-version. It couldn’t but end in a mess.

Windowcolor is a bitch!

I remember now why I did not do more projects with that stuff.
It takes a lot of time. You do the outline, you let it dry for some hours, you fill the spaces, you let it dry for some hours, you correct some details, you let it ...
Also the finally finished pieces are awfully sticky and tensile, they tend to warp if you just look at them in the wrong way! Once they started to stick together there is almost no way to seperate them again AND retain a basic idea of the original shape.

This stuff is supposed to be for children!
How do they manage to do this little pictures you can see everywere?

Anyway ... I’ve done a test piece which will be lodging in our tub for a couple of weeks to see if it likes it there. (I’ve read that some sorts of windowcolor tend to liquidate in moist environments, ... so test piece)

This is how it looks like



You can see that there is only one flower left. Two didn’t survive.

I’m going to buy some of this transparent space filler stuff, maybe it will help ...

Any ideas concerning a name for the project?

Here’s a speach Neil Gaiman gave last May:

Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012

There’s also a comic strip by Gavin Aung Than, who took a bit from the middle of the speach an made it into a comic.
(Actually I read the comic first and until today had no idea what the original speach was like)

zen pencils

This speach is floating around the internet for some time now, so maybe you have seen it already.
But maybe you don’t and you’re listening to it now and you’re feeling as touched and inspired as I am right now.

Do what only you can do best.

When in spirng we moved into this flat which includes a BALCONY people - including me - asumed that by now said balcony would be some sort of impassable ... jungle, looking something like this one.

The truth is ... I’ve been very restrictive with myself and YES you can still stand on the balcony, YES there are three (!) chairs on it and one table, although it’s not usable because of plants standing on it. I like my semi-jungle and I have great plans for it.

For now I just want to show you some pictures of my little urban garden.



The table :)
One of my two 'Balkonkasten', also called the salad bar. There’s basil, rocket salad, lettuce, buck’s horn plantain, coriander, more lettuce and garlic ...
The pots contain more basil (it’s cuban bush basil), rose scented geranium (pelagonium graveolens) and lemon cented geranium (pelagonium citronellum)




Basil and lattuce.



The coriander is - against all my efforts to stop him - desperatly trying to bloom.



On the ground there is




laurel




bell shaped chili pepper (Capsicum baccatum 'Glockenpaprika')




coctail tomato and celery (not in the picture)



courgette



In the other corner:



runner beans (visual-cover-to-be) and the flower pot the sparrows sowed

(originally there was some oregano in it. When I put the pot onto the balcony in early spring it stood right under the bird house. Some day the sparrows hijaked the house, looted it and accidentially sowed some sunflowers and cereals ... last year they planted the cereals into the roof gutter - my landlady was not amused!)



The second 'Balkonkasten' containing parsley, indian cress, more lattuce, some herb I don’t know, but which tastes great, thyme rattail radish (raphanus caudatus) and some forgotten radishes (blooming right now)

Also you can see a bottle containing my efforts in trying to make nettle fertilizer.




thyme and basil



parsley and lettuce



The blooming rattail radish (you eat the young seed vessels)

Not in the pictures are a big pot of oregano, wild basil (Ocimum species 'Cresto'), more trying-to-bloom-coriander and the stuff I collect for my parents

What do you think!?! I like going out there and collenct my food (I don’t like having to water them every day ... )

I don’t think there will be much more in 2012, no worm compost, no mushrooms, no lettuce tree, no hanging cucumbers, no ...

During the last few month I’ve been sporadically folding origami figures. Beeing a bird person my motives were mostly of the feathery kind.
Both, the paper I was using, and my folding skills were not very good, so I’ve often reached my limits halfway during the instructions in the books.
Frustration: check!

Also I’ve tried wet folding (which means using a moist paper to achieve models which are more three dimensional shaped) which did’t work well because the paper expanded unevenly and also started to break.

ANYWAY, here are some pictures of origami birds













Last week Lindir gave me some original origami paper, which is much more thinner (and comes in more colours) than my cheap handicraft paper. Maybe with origami paper it’s the same as with whisky cola - it’s better when you use the real thing ...