under a banana leaf

About a year ago I was living in Durban, South Africa, and working long distance for my publishing house. Our branch magazine wanted to do a short interview with me about that, and asked if I could also get my picture taken for the piece. I was recommended the very talented photographer Val Adamson, who luckily agreed to the job. It was just supposed to be one portrait inside the magazine, but somehow I ended up on the cover and they asked us to take another pic for the insides, which is the green one. Except from my wedding pics this is probably one of my fave pics of myself ever. The dress is one of my best buys, from a local Durban designer called Soul Skin. It cost R280 (about the same in kronor), and I had to convince myself to pay that "much", cos at the time I had decided to have a strict shopping limit for a while. I'm glad I convinced myself to make an exception. I love how it manages to look both African and 50's vintage at the same time.

In the cover pic I'm wearing a little teal brocade vest jacket, also from Soul Skin, a find for R50 from my first visit to Durbs in December 2007. There's so much great shopping in Durbs, I went a little berserk that December actually. Malls, markets, boutiques, department stores: I had fashion shows almost every day when we came home to show off what I'd bought. That was a very fine holiday indeed.

all dolled up and nowhere to go

When I came back from almost a year in South Africa September last, my mum gave me this Japanese wooden doll as a welcome home gift. She thought it looked like me. I completely adore it, and am thinking of maybe buying it a friend some day. They have amazing stuff here: http://www.jun-gifts.com/




But today I got myself another vintage dress friend, cos it's just been one of those weeks when I feel I deserve one. And this one is summery and prefectly 60's flirty and can come with me when I'm going back south in a couple of weeks. It cost a reasonable 85 kronor at Myrorna, and it's in really good shape and wearable straight away. No alteration sewing needed. I also got a pretty light blue polka dot blouse with ruffles for 40 kronor, and a very nice fitted red corduroy spring jacket for 85 kronor. Finally I couldn't resist a huge, heavy art book for a mere 32.50 kronor, it was 50% sale on books (although i would happily have paid 65 for it too)! Will post pics of it later, it's very nice indeed. And I did the major mistake many years ago of lending all my art books to a friend of my brother's. He took the same art history course at university one year after me, and I thought it was safe lending them to him since he at the time was also living with my brother. Unfortunately their friendship ended on bad terms not long after that, and my art books were kind of lost cos I didn't really know him well enough to claim them back.

Anyways, I still have my wonderful collection of calligraphy books intact. I won't lend those to anyone. There might be a little room for the new book among them.

this is not knitting

I decided that I should learn how to knit this year. Two months in the new year, at least I've looked at a website to a store where I meant to take a class, and it said they didn't have any classes during January and February. So now I'm doing this. Just like the world needs another blog. Just like my point of view matters. Blogging obviously isn't knitting, but it's something to do with my hands. I really like doing things with my hands. Baking, cooking, calligraphy, drawing, playing the guitar, playing the piano, doing crosswords, carressing cats, holding hands, sewing. Once I even wrote a song about my hands. It ended up on a Spanish compilation album with Swedish pop music. So maybe I'll get some Spanish readers. Hola, if so.

Well it just might be that I've got something to say. Or show. Show and tell. One can only but try and put things together and hope someone else will see what you see.

Oh, the darling panda is a pic from a Chinese puzzle I bought many years ago in one of my fave shops in Copenhagen, Denmark, simpy called The Chinese Shop (Den kinesiske butik).