... on Thing #4: Ruan Hoffmann

Last year, C and I were in New York for a week, and we stumbled across this installation of 'Much Love Me' by Ruan Hoffmann. It was in the gallery in the Anthropologie store at the Rockefeller Plaza, and I was much taken with it.

I gazed at the intricately-painted plates, admired the skillful installation of so many fragile objects, took some photos, and I went on my way, feeling enriched. Sometimes an artwork just speaks to your soul. This one spoke to mine.

Recently I was having a look at the Anthropologie website, as you do when you catch yourself wishing there was a store here in Australia. Wistful browsing through the homewares. Then... a sudden intake of breath. Click. The Ruan Hoffmann plates. For sale. Some of them, at least... there weren't many left. Click! Click! One of them was destined to come to live with me, it seemed!

It arrived, voluminously packaged, and safe. It came via C's friend Dylan in Seattle, as Anthropologie would only ship to the mainland US. It's made a very long journey, this plate, from its origin in South Africa, and I can't believe it's still in one piece!

Welcome, Ruan Hoffmann plate. I'm so glad you've come to live with me. I hope you don't mind but I'm going to hook a plate hanger on you and look at you every day.

I never thought I'd be the sort of person who would ever buy a plate hanger.

... on Thing #3: The Famous Five

I've just unpacked a box of old books, and come across a treasure: my Famous Five collection. When I was a kid, Enid Blyton made me want to be a tomboy; have a rowboat, a cellar and an attic; go on bicycling holidays; sleep on a pile of bracken in a cave; find an overgrown steam-train on a moor; go to boarding school; and say things like "What ho!" (said Dick. "WHAT HO!")

Five get into trouble 1970 Hodder and Stoughton London

The illustrations by Eileen Soper in the Hodder and Stoughton editions are just lovely.

Five go to Smuggler's Top 1954 Hodder and Stoughton London

Five go to Smuggler's Top 1954 Hodder and Stoughton London

Five to to Smuggler's Top 1954 Hodder and Stoughton London

Five fall into adventure 1954 Hodder and Stoughton London

Endpapers for Five on a Treasure Island 1969 Hodder and Stoughton London

Endpapers for Five fall into Adventure 1954 Hodder and Stoughton London

The rest of the collection is made up of extremely ratty-looking paperbacks from the late seventies which tied in with the TV series made at the time, when Timmy turned into a border collie. Is it awkward that I can still sing the jingle? Probably.

Heavens though... I've just realised that I'm missing five titles - could it be possible that there are Famous Five books that I haven't read? I can't WAIT until the next Lifeline Book Fair!

... on Thing #2: Foreseeing the future

When my Nana Mary died, my Ma, brother and I had to pack up her house. Weirdly, I kinda enjoyed it. Now, I know that's a bit of a morbid thing to say - and at the time I felt guilty about it. But hell - when I pop off I would prefer someone to enjoy going through my stuff rather than finding it a chore or worse - being disinterested and binning the lot!

See, my Nana Mary was a strong, interesting lady. She wore a long white plait for as long as I knew her, and was prone to saying exactly what she thought. For example; "You've put on a lot of weight, Ems!" and to my brother, hairline receding; "Why don't you cut off some of that hair at the back (he had long hair at the time) and get it made into a wig for the top?" and, the first time she met my Ma (short, brunette) said "I always thought Stef would marry a tall blonde."

When the three of us packed up her house, we found things that immediately had to be shared and discussed. She had books on interpreting dreams, the occult, on how to increase your concentration and phrenology. Wrapped in a piece of red velvet at the back of her closet we found a crystal ball, the sort we imagined should belong in a gypsy garavan.

One Thing that eventually found a home with me was this.

This little fortune-telling dice is completely charming... I can see it being brought out at dinner parties after the port, and my Nana Mary casting it across the table with aplomb, nail varnish and rings glittering.

The idea is that you choose a category to query - about love, marriage, finance, the home, luck, or surprise. You roll the dice and then match the resulting number with the sheet of results. You can also ask yes/no questions and determine an answer whether the result is an odd or even number.

This morning I've had an experimental roll of the dice - I picked the genre 'Surprise' and rolled a 16... the result was 'A letter from an old-time friend with lots of good news.' That sounds promising!

Would you like me to roll the dice for you? Let me know your preferred category (once again - they are love, marriage, finance, the home, luck, or surprise) in the comments and I'll roll the dice and let you know what your result is. What fun!

... on 'Thing #1'.

The prospect of moving house shortly has me thinking about 'things', and why we have them, and how they help to make the place where you live into your home. I've had space of my own for most of my adult life, and although I don't normally pay much heed to astrological notions (I once had a colleague who had worked at a regional newspaper and in the absence of a proper astrologer she would write the horoscopes herself based on the weekly relationship dynamics of her bosses - a husband and wife team!) but I am a Cancerian, and apparently we tend to be people for whom the idea of 'home' is of great importance. True, for me. No doubt about it!

Yesterday I was gazing idly at my bookcase, wondering if I'm going to have the will to do a cull of books before I move, when my eye came to rest on a little Thing that I recently rediscovered. It had been sitting in the back of an old wardrobe in the shed for many years, but I was so delighted to see it again - I blew off the dust and put it on my bookshelf.

I remember making this little house. I don't know if I was 7 or 9 or 11 years old, but I do remember making it. We had a dam, and every now and then an excavator would be hired to dig it a bit bigger. The resulting mounds of earth became a place to build cubbies and mudslides, and a source of clay in a variety of colours. Pale clay like this was highly prized, as most of it was brown, but it was all full of bits of gravel and organic matter.

It's quite odd to see the fingerprints of my 7 or 9 or 11 year old self, left on something that I made. I remember that this house was 'the house I want to live in when I grow up'. I think it was modelled on the house of my dear friends The Joneses, as I was very envious of the steeply pitched roof of their home, Casuarina Cottage, and it had a room in the attic. All the Famous Five books I was reading at the time seemed to have adventures in an attic, and I so wanted one too! But I remember that I wanted this house to be surrounded by trees and for it to have a front garden with a fence.

Here's the curious thing. Our new house has a steeply pitched roof. It's under two big trees. It has a front garden with a fence. It's lacking an attic room but hell! What a coincidence!
I think there will have to be a place for this, don't you?

... on 'things'.

I've been wondering about something lately. I've been busy helping C build our house for us. I've insulated and painted and sanded and occasionally flaked out in the heat, but it all seems very worthwhile because I'm helping to make something practical, something useful - somewhere to live!

But, as I've been insulating and painting and sanding, sometimes I've caught myself wishing that I was sitting down to finish off a batch of cast plaster letters, or making a new mould from Pinkysil, or carving a swirly ampersand, or peeling the bark off a dry branch to make a wall hanging from some speckled bird's eggs. But because I'm busy being practical, I can't quite do any of that stuff right at the moment, and so I keep on thinking. I wonder about these things that I love to make - they have no purpose other than to decorate, to be pretty. I think about my current house, and about the things that make it 'mine', and yes, it's full of ornamentation. (This usually ignites a flurry of horror about just how I'll go when it comes to combining C's and my household items when we move in together in a month or so. Will he draw the line when it comes to my mouldy old handle-less aluminium teapot that I pulled out of an old campsite, and filled with dried seaweed stems from a beach at Coff's Harbour? Eeek!) But to me, these are the things that help make my home feel like mine, and although I may possibly have a bit too much, I can't imagine having it any other way.

So, as I pour out yet more white enamel paint into the tray, my thinking continues. What is it going to be like when I move my 'things' from my old (beloved) home into this new, brand-spanking one? Will there be a place for my blue-spotted ceramic bowl full of pebbles I've collected on various trips? That little shell-and-bead wall hanging that I made one summer holiday - will there be a spot for it, and what happens to it if there's just not? What will C think as I gaily unearth old treasures from boxes (and I know I have several that will come to light when I move) and start cluttering up our house with them?

I was at Harvey Norman recently and I saw a couple buying a 'painting'. I say 'painting' because it was the sort of mass-produced thing that has been digitally printed on canvas and then someone has brushed over it with varnish to give it some texture, to make it look real. I shudder. I mean - a lot of people must buy stuff like this to fill their homes and feel proud of it, but it's certainly not something I would ever want. So, in a time when you can buy 'art' in Harvey Norman and when much of the 'pretty' things you see in the shops have been made en masse in China, I feel GOOD when I think about my messy home filled with handmade bits and pieces, and old junk I've pulled out of the bushes! I'll let you know how I go when it comes to editing down when I move (C has said "I like your style, but I don't want all of it!") but for now I'm going to enjoy the notion that there must be other people in the world who like handmade things that have no purpose other than to help make someone's home 'theirs'.