The art of Quilling...

...is a craft I never heard of until I became acquainted with my now very dear friend Kim Kollert, aka Hopeful Writer. 

Quilling...not to be confused with quilting, is a unique paper craft based on curled strips of paper shaped and and composed into many configurations.  Also known as paper filigree or paper rolling there are different theories as to  its origin.  Some believe it to originate from egyptian times, others  say it began in China with the creation of paper in the first century AD.  During the 4th and 5th centuries silver and gold wire was curled to make jewellery.  The word quilling arose from the use at one time of goose feathers (or quills).

Ok enough history.

My purpose in this post is to advertise Kim's wares.  I have already been the beneficiary of her work and recently also purchased some of her christmas goodies, including gift tags, ornaments and snowflake decorations.  Since my purchase her range of products has expanded.

Followers of this blog will have seen her work in my post about the software giveaway last month.  You may not have realised what you were seeing so here is some of it again...

A card to cheer me up......

 A framed piece to decorate my desk...

...and another frame from my wall....

Here are samples of her Christmas wares....

Just click on any picture to enter the album and see them in larger format...

 

Different colour snowflakes to adorn the Christmas tree.

She has mini Wreaths as either pins to wear or on magnets for your fridge.

And below her newest angel design gift tags.

If you are interested in purchasing any of these items with Christmas on the horizon you can contact Kim direct via email - KimKollert78@gmail.com.

Kim will provide you with pricing and postage costs.  Since I live in Australia and she lives in Oregon it is obvious she will ship worldwide.

You may be wondering what is in this for me.  Well... nothing except support for my dear friend.  Plus, I spoke recently about us returning to our roots and taking up crafts again.  Well here is a craft that is unique and beautiful.  So just imagine your house, gifts and xmas tree decorated with some of the above treasures.  Mine will be.  

Just remember this stuff is hand made, and not from cheap flimsy paper either as Kim uses a higher grade card instead.  She works painstakingly over many hours to make them.  So while you can go to K-mart and buy 10 ornaments for $20 the problem is that they are the same as everyone else's.  A few of Kim's wares in your house will be a talking point for you and your friends. 

I paid for mine via Kim's PayPal account so it was easy. 

So how about supporting Kim in her fledgling cottage industry based in her garage in beautiful Wood Village, Oregon.

Email her today ----> KimKollert78@gmail.com. 

Visit her blog -----> http://hopefulwriter-kk.blogspot.com/ 

*****

Boomerang friends.....

...are those friends you may not see or speak to for weeks, months or years sometimes, but who never forget you, and never recriminate.  Boomerang friends are the ones that wander far and wide but always return.

I have several of these friends.  They are my most treasured ones because I know that with just one phone call they are right back there, beside me, as if nothing had happened.

One such friend came to visit today.  I have known her since I was a teenager.  She called and invited herself over.  I hadn't seen her since April of this year.  We shared another mutual friend, the angel who passed away last week.  She knew I would be upset and grieving so she came over.

There was no ' you never call'. There was only 'how are you?'  We talked for nearly 6 hours, through one bottle of red and a whole pot of coffee.   We caught up on family matters, we paid homage to our departed friend, we compared eBooks on my Kindle and her iPad.  We learned that we both sold our 100 year old antique pianos only weeks apart.  We learned that we had both cleaned up our book collections and disposed of certain kinds of books.


We touched on so many topics that there was never any silence.  It was so nice.


I may not see her again for months.  It doesn't matter.  Other boomerang friends will step into the breach.


I am a very lucky girl.


And like this snail I will now crawl back into my little hidey hole till the next boomerang hits...

My beautiful daughter

I want to talk about my daughter today.  Her name is Vaya.

She is my first born and the one I have made most of my mistakes on.  My son benefited somewhat from what I learned from those mistakes but he had his own set to contend with.

But my daughter has taught me what is real in life.

She is loved by everyone she meets.  She is smart, she is funny - no really she is, she's a comedian and a brilliant one.  She writes, she acts, she baby sits, she is a good friend and even a good cook.  She is dedicated, hard-working, loving and loyal.

In short she is everything I wish I was.

On top of everything else she doesn't let anything slow her down.  Vaya has tourettes syndrome.  A mild form of it granted, but she has it.  It has never stopped her.  In fact at the time she was being diagnosed at the ripe old age of 11 she was adamant she did not want to be seeing doctors and absolutely did not want to take any drugs to control it.  We battled on that score for a short time but I gave in because I began to question my own motives for pushing her into medical solutions for something that only bothered me.

Recently I was chatting with one of her best friends on Facebook and mentioned the Tourettes. We were talking about how the girls had grown and how life had panned out for each of them.  I made some comment about how much I admire my own daughter who has made a life for herself as if she never had Tourettes.  Her friend wrote back and said "oh yeh I forgot about that...I don't even notice".  I was well and truly put in my place.  My daughter's friends don't measure her life and her successes by a neurological disorder, however mild, so why do I?  Well in fact I don't  but it rammed home the truth to me - that the only true handicap my little girl ever had was her mother.  My neuroses, by insecurities, my mistakes all visited upon her.  But she rose above it all and became her mother's greatest inspiration.

Part of the reason I started blogging was to fulfill a lifelong dream of writing. Of writing something, anything at all.  Now in my 50s I have taken the first tentative steps.  My daughter is 29 and has surpassed me in achievements 100 times over.  My only advice to her had always been to do what made her happy.  And she is.  I keep my greek mother self in a box and refrain from asking when she will marry, or when she will have children, or when she will buy a house.  It is hard - because that was the only path that was envisaged for me as I grew up.  

I want to say that I am proud of her.  But that is arrogant and wrong.  You can only be proud of something you have done yourself.  In fact she has become the wonderful young woman she is despite me.  So, instead, I will say that I am proud to be associated with her.  I am proud to be called her mother.  On my Twitter profile I describe myself  as 'aka Vaya's mum'.  It's a funny twist in my twisted life.  I resentfully grew up in my mother's shadow yet I walk proudly in my daughter's. 

So this morning, as the day dawned on my dear friend's funeral I sit here thinking of the other woman (and heaven help me she IS a woman) in my life who inspires me.  As one inspirational being leaves this earth another slides into place to show me the way.  I find myself truly amazed that my own child  turns out to be my true inspiration. 

The apple fell under the tree and is nurturing it. 

I am a very lucky person.

Where did the time go?

I still remember the troubled pregnancy.  The late term termination the doctor's recommended for the sake of my health.  I remember the birth in graphic detail.  I remember almost losing him when his bilirubin count went off the chart and we rushed him to another hospital for an emergency total blood transfusion at just 3 days old.

I remember every detail vividly and now he graduates from high school, a licensed driver and about to go into final exams for a place at university.

This boy, who was 6 weeks prem ......

With his big sister

Aged 2

Age 3

Age 4

age 5 and with his first fish

Prep to first year of high school (what's with the hair kid?)

.....and was supposed to have hearing and learning difficulties but who has none such, is now a man.  Perfect in every way to his mother - except his hate of being photographed!


My blonde, blue-eyed little miracle.....

I sat through the entire graduation dinner trying NOT to cry.

Where DID the time go???????

Oh Melbourne weather how did you know....?

On this overcast, damp and dank Melbourne morning I marvel at how relaxed and content I am feeling.  I have always loved this weather, light drizzle, the smell of the damp earth wafting through the doors and windows.

And even today as the true grieving process begins to set in I look out of the window here and am energised by the vividness of the colours in this grey light.  


The walnut leaves look an emerald green, the zygocactus reds above are glowing and the enormous flowers give shelter to a tiny moth.  The white ornithogalums are positively fluorescent. 

I can see the new growth on the Japanese maple tinged a pinkish orange against the rich greenery around it.  It is all breathtaking.  Life is everywhere.  Birds continue to nest, snails leave their silvery trails on the ground.

In other spots of the garden the red and the yellow Arum lillies are beginning to shoot.  I don't know which is which - I never remember and it is like a surprise every year.  My friend loved those lillies and I even gave her some bulbs to grow her own just last year. I remember how excited she was on the phone telling me that they were flowering.  At 79 she still derived joy from the simplest things - a savage lesson to all of us who get caught up in the silliness of the world.

Beneath this grey, grey sky, nature wreaks her magic and my heart swells with contentment and wonder.

The irises erupted this morning in the wet - opening their multiple arms to catch the drops.












The staghorn reaches out to funnel refreshing water into its bowels and I watched as the rivulets darkened the grey bark of the walnut trunk below as the overflow ran down to refresh the cyclamen and ferns beneath the canopy.  Such an organised, socialist system of order as there is in the plant world - none are neglected.


And, saluting another day, the agapanthus spikes reach skyward growing visibly to me by the hour.

I marvel at how quickly my juvenile garden is embracing the breaking drought and the long missed joy of rain.  A decade of dryness and harshness.  A decade of replacing plants that have succumbed.  But now the new growth can be measured in feet instead of inches - as in the past years.  Now the garden beds will begin to fill out. Garden beds that are lined with the trunks of Tree ferns that could not survive in the arid and waterless conditions they were subjected to.  I could not bear to mulch them or cut them up so they now proudly stand guard and contain the unruliness of the herbaceous plants on one side and the ornamental grasses on the other.  Their majestic trunks are now horizontal but a reminder of the circle of life.

 *******

She is gone....

My beloved friend, surrogate mother and role model has left this world....in her honour I here post pictures of all the flowers I have in my garden, all the flowers and plants that she loved to inspect when she came to my home....

May she rest in peace and in our hearts forever......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 And her favourite - the Gardenia

 ************